The role of the psychological contract in shaping graduate experiences: a study of public sector talent management programmes in the UK and Australia

Abstract

Although talent management is acknowledged for its role in building competitive advantage, very little research has examined the factors that influence the success of talent management programmes at an individual level. In this paper we explore participant experiences (n = 68) from two public sector ‘fast track’ graduate development programmes, one in the UK and one in Australia. Drawing on psychological contract theory we examine how talent management programmes shape individual expectations and how these expectations influence participant experiences and evaluations of the programme. Our findings highlight the role of both talent management strategy and talent management implementation as well as factors external to the organisation, (such as employer brand and the influence of family and friends), in shaping expectations. Our analysis highlights the impact of multiple agents, particularly line managers, in the ongoing development and fulfilment of the ‘graduate psychological contract’. At a practical level, we argue that organisations need to manage expectations by more explicitly communicating what will, or will not, be offered in a graduate fast-track programme. We also suggest that organisations need to consider the importance of line managers in the implementation of talent management.     

Exploring supply management status,internal collaboration and operating performance

An important internal link in the supply chain is between supply managers and their internal customers. These individuals must collaborate to determine purchase specifications, develop sourcing strategies, ensure supplier performance, and maintain effective supplier relationships. Using power and social networking as the theoretical lenses, we develop and test a conceptual model examining the supply management function’s status, supply manager’s networking behavior, collaboration with the internal customer, and operating performance (lower cost, better quality, faster delivery, and consistent delivery). We also examine the mediating effect of collaboration and networking behavior on the positive effect of status and operating performance. Data gathered in an online survey of supply management professionals are examined using path analysis. Results show that without including the mediators, supply management status is directly related to all four operating performance measures. It is also positively related to collaboration with the internal customer and networking behavior. Contrary to expectations, the supply manager’s networking behavior is not related to collaboration with the internal customer. Collaboration is positively related to all four operating performance measures. However, the supply manager’s networking behavior is only related to one operating performance measure, better quality. Mediation analysis shows that supply management status has a direct effect on faster delivery performance beyond what is explained by collaboration and the supply manager’s networking behavior. The findings suggest that organizations should look for ways to elevate the status of the supply management function to improve internal collaboration and operating performance.     

Corporate Cultural Change – Is It Relevant For the Organisations of the 1990s?

Partly as a consequence of the popularity of the ‘excellence’ literature of the early 1980s, there was a widespread acceptance that ‘corporate cultural change’ was one of the effective mechanisms within a strategic HRM approach to people management. However, recent research into imposed cultural change programmes in the late 1980s raises doubts about their effectiveness as change mechanisms, as management control devices and as contributors to business performance. This article engages in the current debate concerning the aims, design and implementation of cultural change but goes on to question the relevance of such an idea for organisations in the context of the 1990s. the article extends the many debates within the HRM and corporate culture literature by contextualising them within the emerging features of organisations in the 1990s.     

Managing employee expectations during acquisitions

There is a wide body of evidence that suggests that the management of 'human factors' in post‐acquisition implementation is important and, where it is badly managed, helps to explain why up to half of acquisitions are not deemed to be successful. A central feature in this process is the management of employee expectations. Using research insights drawn from the management and formation of expectations in recruitment and from breaches of the psychological contract, this article reports on research in organisations subject to a takeover within two years of the field work. Detailed findings on two of these cases are used to explore the dimensions of dual expectations in such circumstances. It is suggested that employees in acquired companies have concerns that become expectations concerning both themselves ('me') and their work group ('us'), ranging from immediate job and employment worries on transfer to longer‐term status and behavioural and cultural concerns in the 'new' organisation. These expectations will vary over time and have different facets according to the seniority of the employee, the degree of integration sought by the acquirer and the extent to which expectations formed are proven to be realistic and realisable. The two cases analysed reveal different aspects of unmet expectations in acquisitions. Seven factors were identified as influential in shaping employees' expectations in acquisitions: quality of communication, believability of information, trust in management action, credibility of leadership, fairness of action, consistency of action and communication and logic of management action or behaviour.     

Trustee decision making in small UK charities

Management theory suggests that increasing the quantity and quality of management information available to key members in organisations will lead to improvements in their decision making. However, judgements as to what counts as ‘management information’, and in what its quality consists may vary according to organisational location, size and purpose. Where those ‘key members’ are volunteers, as with charity trustees, perceptions of management information need, amount and value, may vary further. This paper explores aspects of this theory, with particular reference to trustees of small charities in the United Kingdom. It outlines a research programme drawing on trustees in organisations working for children and for people with disabilities. A range of findings is presented, recording trustee experiences of and responses to management information, as this affects their charities' performance. Following from three in-depth case studies in small charities, findings show that informal systems are in operation, whereby trustees devolve much of the responsibility for management information to their chief officers, who are then monitored by their chairs. While this system is viewed by participants as an effective and practical means of enabling decision making, certain questions are raised regarding trustee liability and accountability.     

Organisational communication and supportive employees

The importance of the social dimension of organisations is currently a strong focus of emphasis in the literature. From a managerial perspective, however, it is important that the community spirit within an organisation falls in line with its strategic direction. The study discussed in this article shows that high quality internal communication may be important in encouraging such a supportive attitude. What is considered ‘good’ internal communication does not directly engender more support for the organisation's strategic direction. However, evidence from research in five organisations (with 791 respondents distributed across 19 work units) suggests that there are two ways to foster support. One is to create a sense of commitment within the organisation; the other is to establish trust in the management. Both approaches appear to have a positive relationship with good internal communication. The quality of task‐related communication is important in creating commitment. What is vital in creating trust, however, is the quality of non‐task‐related communication. The study at the focus of this article addresses the following question: does organisational communication help foster a positive attitude towards the strategic direction of an organisation?     

企业所得税法对企业组建税务筹划主要方法的探讨

依法纳税是纳税人应尽的义务,而税务筹划亦是其应当享有的正当权利。在现实经济生活中,税务筹划已逐步成为纳税人理财的重要手段之一。在新形势下,企业作为纳税人,怎样熟悉了解我国企业所得税相关法律制度,利用税法所提供的优惠政策及可选择性条款,合法合理进行税务筹划,为企业提高经济效益已经成为当今企业一个必修的课题。     

Managing sourcing team effectiveness: The need for a team perspective in purchasing organizations

To meet today’s high demands on the purchasing function, sourcing teams have become the standard in contemporary corporate purchasing organizations. Sourcing teams are often started with high expectations. However, after making a promising start many of these teams appear to be unable to operate effectively and to meet management expectations. This study shows that sourcing team effectiveness is particularly hindered by a lack of team perspective in many purchasing organizations. In this paper, the results of a large-scale, cross-sectional survey to address the success factors for sourcing teams are discussed. We aim to clarify the factors behind sourcing team performance, taking into account the specific task and organizational context. It is concluded that purchasing executives should shift their focus towards employee involvement and team processes, to enable teams to actually meet and even surpass the expectations placed on them.     

How Do Financial Constraints Relate to Financial Reporting Quality? Evidence from Seasoned Equity Offerings

This paper examines how constraints on firms’ financing capacity relate to managers’ discretionary accounting choices. Three hypotheses of earnings management – the opportunism hypothesis, the rational expectations hypothesis, and the signaling hypothesis – predict that constrained firms engage in greater upward earnings management than unconstrained firms when selling equity. Using a sample of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) announced between 1983 and 2014, I find support for this prediction. The relation between financial constraints and earnings management is robust to including controls such as offer size, growth opportunities, analyst following, and chief executive officer equity holdings, as well as to using the instrumental variable approach. Investors’ reaction around and following the SEO announcement supports the rational expectations hypothesis. I find that aggressive earnings management by constrained issuers is associated with lower SEO announcement returns but is not followed by negative abnormal returns in the long run. The evidence suggests that constrained issuers’ aggressive use of income-increasing accruals is an outcome of managerial myopia caused by capital market pressure, not managerial opportunism intended to mislead investors.     

质量管理实践的实证研究

在相关文献分析的基础上,通过对质量管理实践和企业绩效的界定,利用对苏州、南京和徐州三地企业的调查资料,探究质量管理实践对企业绩效的影响,并对一些学者的研究结果进行验证。结果显示,质量培训、流程管理、顾客关系等9项质量管理实践对企业绩效有显著影响,不支持管理者承诺对企业绩效有显著影响的观点。     

Sustainable humanitarian supply chain management – exploring new theory

Disaster response operations aim at helping as many victims as possible in the shortest time, with limited consideration of the socio-economic context. During the disaster rehabilitation phase, the perspective needs to broaden and comprehensively take into account the local environment. We propose a framework of sustainable humanitarian supply chain management (SCM) that facilitates such comprehensive performance. We conceptualise the framework by combining literature from the fields of sustainable and humanitarian SCM. We test the framework through an analytic induction process by means of multiple case studies of four relief organisations. Our framework suggests that supply chain design needs to be aligned not only to relief organisations’ enablers, but also to the population's long-term requirements as well as any socio-economic and governmental contingency factors. A good fit between these dimensions leads to sustainable performance. The framework provides an instrument for relief organisations to achieve sustainable performance in the disaster rehabilitation phase.     

浅谈化工企业人力资源管理研究

在如今国内经济和企业空前发展的背景下,企业的竞争也越来越激烈。而归根揭底现代企业的竞争就是人才的竞争,如何做好企业人力资源管理已成摆在我们面前的重大课题,笔者就自己的具体实践,简单阐述了化工企业人力资源管理的一些看法。     

Foundation funding of grassroots organisations

According to grassroots scholar David Horton Smith, there are 7.5 million grassroots associations in the USA (compared to two million paid staff nonprofits). He states, ‘Associational participation is a major engine of democratic participation.’ J. Craig Jenkins and Abigail Halcli found that foundations commit only 0.2 per cent of all their grants for indigenous social movement organisations. The Foundation Center collects no statistics concerning foundation funding of grassroots organisations. Why do grassroots organisations not receive more foundation money? What could foundations do differently to get more money into their hands? And what could grassroots organisations do differently to obtain more foundation money? These are the central questions addressed in this study. To obtain answers to these questions, 48 people were interviewed by telephone: 26 grassroots organisation leaders and 22 foundation executives. The findings in this study defy easy summary. Contrary to the author's expectations, there is often great harmony between grassroots leaders and foundation officials. Frequently, the interviewees, whether grassroots or foundation types, speak of or allude to ‘partnerships’. This is true even when most grassroots leaders blame foundations for the fact that they do not receive any or enough money. Another key finding is that foundation officials believe that different social class between themselves and grassroots organisations is crucial to the minimal funding of grassroots organisations. Yet almost no grassroots leaders mentioned this as a factor. Perhaps the most salient fact that comes through, is that the foundations that regularly fund grassroots organisations have great knowledge and sympathy for these organisations, and that other funders who might want to enter into such funding would be well advised to seek their counsel. By the same token, the grassroots organisations which have done well with foundation funding feel quite comfortable with the foundations, and those other grassroots leaders who might want to obtain foundation funding should seek out their successful brothers and sisters. The particular value of this qualitative study is the way in which it divulges the great diversity of interactions between grassroots and foundation leaders. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Understanding graduate recruitment,development and retention for the enhancement of talent management: sharpening ‘the edge’ of graduate talent

Graduates are deemed to be a key source of talent within many organisations and thus recruiting, developing and retaining them is viewed as a logical talent management (TM) strategy. However, there has been little attention paid to university graduates as part of an organisation’s TM strategy. Such a specific focus addresses the need for further research into the segmentation of talent pools and the specific challenges different talent pools are likely to create. This research, which utilised a qualitative data collection strategy, examined the experiences and practices of six large UK organisations in relation to graduate TM. Drawing from Gallardo-Gallardo, Dries and González-Cruz’s (2013. What is the meaning of ‘talent’ in the world of work? Human Resource Management Review, 23, 290–300.) framework for the conceptualisation of talent, the findings from this research indicate and explain why graduate employers are frequently compelled to use the object approach (talent as characteristics of people) due to the unique characteristics that recent graduates possess, even though other studies have found that a subject approach (talent as people and what they do) is preferred by most employers. Ultimately, employers conceptualise graduate talent by what they describe as ‘the edge’ which needs to be ‘sharpened’ to fully realise the potential that graduates offer.     

Change within purchasing and supply management organisations – Assessing the claims from maturity models

It is a wide-held assumption that professional development and change within purchasing and supply management (PSM) organisations can be explained and guided by a maturity model. In this paper the guidance which the maturity model concept offers to understand a PSM organisation's performance is assessed. The methodology is based on the outcomes of a literature review of PSM maturity models, development of an organisational change framework and the learning from three qualitative case studies. An alternative understanding of the development of the PSM organisation is offered through an organisational change framework, composing 1) movement transitions, 2) scalability of change, 3) acceptability of change, and 4) the substantive element of change. The research found that extant PSM maturity models are too rigid for PSM managers to apply, and although maturity models are commonly accepted in PSM literature, in practice, they may produce the opposite effect of what is promised. The PSM maturity models suggest that their application will lead to increased status and influence of PSM within the organisation; expectations that may not be met. PSM organisations’ change processes are subjected to a range of situational and contextual power relations which must be considered in order to advance the specific PSM organisation roles and responsibilities.     

Ethnic minority women: a lost voice in HRM

Strategic themes within HRM imply an organisational commitment towards the full deployment of all employees in order to meet business goals and objectives. The rhetoric of equality within HRM has been challenged but these discussions have typically focused on gender issues, ignoring ethnicity, culture and religion. Individuals' social group cultures and other cultural and religious aspects have been largely absent in HR literature. By examining ethnic minority women's struggles to fit into white Western organisations, this article seeks to provide a discussion on an area where limited research has been conducted. Our emphasis is placed on organisational expectations in relation to ethnic minority women's demonstrated behaviours and appearance, the latter being expressed through dressing, hairstyles and mannerisms. The empirical data show that ethnic minority women are often required to fit into the existing culture if they want to penetrate influential networks or be given opportunities for career development and advancement. Extending the critique of others who argue that organisations must move away from the existing male‐dominant culture rather than expecting women to move towards it, we contend that management must also acknowledge and better understand religious and cultural differences instead of requiring ethnic minority women to fit into a narrow mono‐culture. The article concludes with a discussion of human resource implications for organisations engaged in diversity management.     

Anchoring the mission: A framework for understanding mission maintenance in professional service firms

Mission maintenance in professional service firms must balance the commercial and professional logics and prevent mission drift. Based on a case study of ‘auditing in action’ in a German professional service firm we argue that mission maintenance results from interactions between the practice and field level. We find that anchors on the field level target individuals’ discretionary choices by balancing competing demands from the commercial and professional logics on the practice level. Therefore, we identify anchoring as a central cross-level mechanism for maintaining the balance between routinizing for professional quality and ‘flexibilizing’ for efficiency on the practice level. With these findings we make two contributions to the literature: an analysis of how the field level can contribute to maintaining organisations’ missions in fields that have competing logics, and the identification of anchoring as a central mechanism to balance competing demands with the expectations of referent audiences on the field level.     

False modesty: When disclosing good news looks bad

Is it always wise to disclose good news? Using a new statistical dominance condition, we show that if the receiver has any private receiver information then the weakest senders with good news gain the most from boasting about it. Hence the act of disclosing good news can paradoxically make the sender look bad. Nondisclosure by some or all senders is an equilibrium if standards for the news are sufficiently easy or if prior expectations without the news are sufficiently favorable. Full disclosure is the unique equilibrium if standards are sufficiently difficult or sufficiently fine, or if prior expectations are sufficiently unfavorable. Since the sender has a legitimate fear of looking overly anxious to reveal good news, mandating that the sender disclose the news can help the sender. The model’s predictions are consistent with when faculty avoid using titles such as “Dr.” or “Professor” in voicemail greetings and course syllabi.     

Cashing In On Quality? Pay Incentives and the Quality Culture

In this article, the authors explore the relationship between total quality management (TQM) and financial incentives in British manufacturing industry. In particular, they examine the view of some of the most influential quality management ‘gurus’ that there is an incompatibility between incentive pay and TQM. Drawing on survey and case study evidence, they show that TQM is being implemented in the presence of financial incentives. Furthermore, those organisations which had such incentives did not appear to have less success in implementing TQM. On the basis of the evidence presented, the authors conclude that it is not possible to rule out a role for financial incentives in implementing TQM, although incentives are only likely to form one element in a broader implementation strategy.     

Charitable donations by China’s private enterprises

The number of private enterprises in China has grown rapidly, and donations from them are an important source of philanthropy in China today. This paper investigates donations made by private enterprises in 2011 using a survey of data covering all 31 provincial-level units of China. The data show that philanthropy practised by Chinese private enterprises is widespread, but the amounts of donations are unequally distributed. Furthermore, donations are positively related to a company’s profit and in most cases also to the owner’s political participation as expressed in membership in the People’s Congress (PC) as well as the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at different levels. Donating is also positively related to the presence of a branch of the Communist Party of China and a trade union within the firm. In contrast, there is little support for donations being related to the characteristics of the major owner of the business, such as their gender, age, previous employment experience, party membership or to the governance structure or location of the private firms.